Quick Follow-up to Yesterday's Post

Yesterday I blogged about whether or not e-philanthropy worked. The answer was a conditional yes, but that it is getting off the ground slowly. Jason Dick at A Small Change confirms this with his post Online Fundraising is Hard. But he agrees that it really is just a matter of time. Just a little patience, that's all we need. Oh, and some tenacity mixed in there, too.

Evangelical Groups are Still Okay in the Economy, What About Museums?

According to Jeff over at Donor Power Blog, evangelical organizations are actually doing okay during the recession, and on top of that, they are also employing specific strategies to their fundraising approaches to help keep their heads above water during this trying economic times. This is according to a survey from the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.

Some of the strategies that they are now employing include increasing one-on-one contact with key donors, changing the style of their message and specifically developing materials that address how the organizations are responding to the economic crisis.

So what about museums? Anyone have stats yet about how their fundraising yields are comparing with the past few years? Have any museums been making changes in their messages or approaches to fundraising? What has been working? What hasn't?

Coping Strategies: The Beginnings of a List

Okay. So every day I read about more badness happening in the museum world due to the economy. But all of this "badness" is actually the implementation of coping strategies. What are these strategies and which museums are implementing them? Here's the beginning of a list, I imagine it will continue to grow.

Lay-offs
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Getty
Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego
Detroit Institute of Arts
High Museum
Philadelphia Art Museum
San Diego Art Museum

Delay of Capital Projects
Cincinnati Art Museum
Indianapolis Museum of Art
St. Louis Art Museum
Museum of Tolerance

Raised Admission Fees
Art Institute, Chicago
Brooklyn Museum

Cancellation of Programs
Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego
Dallas Museum of Art

Selling Collections
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis

These could all be construed as negative strategies. But there are some more positive strategies being employed, too. It's just that these can tend to have a smaller economic impact. These strategies include creative fundraising idea employed at the Queens Museum of Art, innovative programming at MOMA and the Hammer, new advertising campaigns and reaching out to new audiences through the Internet like at the Brooklyn Museum.

Sources:
Sign on San Diego
Dallas News
New York Times
Employment Spectator
Sign on San Diego
WBUR
New York Times
LA Times
New York Times

I Got a Bridge to Sell You...

Okay, so enough with all the bad news about what's happening out there in the museum world! Here is a creative approach to an old fundraising idea that really kind of tickles me: the Queens Museum of Art is "selling real estate" from their scale model of New York City! Maybe I just have the nostalgia factor going on, but I really like this idea and I kind of want to "buy" the old apartment I grew up in.

A couple years ago, I did a nation-wide survey about a variety of fundraising approaches. One thing I learned from my respondents was that the "buy-a-brick/star/tile/piece of wall/etc." and the "sponsor an object/exhibit/specimen/etc." fundraising schemes while exceedingly cute and clever often did not amount to a lot in the way of actual dollars. However, there seemed to be a formula for those programs that did succeed: they were very specific in every way.

Being encouraged to "buy a brick" so that your name can go on a funders wall is very generic; there's nothing especially sexy about it--we've all seen those walls a million times over. But "buying" something that is really relevant to your constituents--like their own home in miniature, especially when often the real thing is not even available for sale, or astronomically expensive if it were for sale--is personal and appealing.

I hope this fundraiser does really well. $50 for an apartment, $250 for a single family home. $10,000 for an office building. Go invest in New York!